The joys and the sorrows of reconstruction

What a lovely thing to report: the larger of the two ceilings at the river house has revealed itself. A lovely old man who is an expert for this kind of work took the top planks off, cleaned them and oiled them and injected some stuff into the woodworm-weakened bits. Then we uncovered the underside of the ceiling and the planks were replaced.
Voila! here is a view that was hidden for up to some four hundred years. We even found a date scratched into the gable end wall above the ceiling - 1638. It may or may not be the actual date the ceiling was put there, but from its shape and manner, the conservationists all agree it's near enough (sorry, that's the best pic I could get). I fancy that the ceiling might have been built during the time the Krumlov scribe lived there (see below) as he was the only one of the long string of occupants who might have had enough money to do it? Anyhow: the main beams will now also be cleaned and preserved, and we should enjoy living in its presence from now on. Feels good.
What doesn't feel good is that due to a huge tax bill on the sale of our previous property I shan't have enough to do everything I hoped to achieve. Wouldn't mind if I knew the money was going to good purposes but when I see how public funds get squandered (see 'protest' below), I'd rather be able to spend mine on employing local craftsmen and preserving historic buildings such as this one. There: it's off my chest. Grrr.

some history of the riverside house

For those who might enjoy this sort of thing, here is an extract from the search report on our newly acquired Cesky Krumlov house at Parkan. I find it very moving to now know the names of some of the people who passed through the house. One wanders through the (still empty) rooms and imagines their lives. Where they ate, slept, worked... how their lives passed, whom they loved...

Characteristics: A mediaeval building, re-built in renaissance style in the second half of 16th century. Other major rebuilds happened in the classicist period around 1800 and in the 2nd half of 19th century. Modernisation of ground floor and some upper floor rooms took place in 1990s.

Successive owners during the early parts of the building's history:
The first available record shows one Melichar, a weaver, who died in 1519. In that year the house was sold by Tomas of Mysleny, alias Pint, probably a testament executor, to cobbler Girgl, who lived in the house only till 1524. He sold the house to Jan Nevrlec, who again only owned it for a short period and sold it in 1524 to tanner Hanzl. Hanzl married a widow of tanner Ambroz, and lived there till his death in 1572. His wife then remarried and her new husband, tanner Linhart Kropf, continued running the tannery workshop. But soon Hanzl's son Prokop took over the house and sold it, in 1584, to one Martin Krumlovian - originally from Trebon, a Rosenberg scribe. In the 1590s, the records mention canner Ursula, widow of next door's blacksmith Havel. In 1596 the house had three chimneys (could have served the cannery workshop), but in 1602 there is only one. Canner Ursula sold the house in 1605 to Michal Wagner, who sold it in 1611 to spurs-maker Hans Temel. In 1637 Temel sold the house to a rope-maker Alxandr Prenner, who lived there till 1654.

What amused me was that the report now says 'no newer owners were searched for'. NEWER? Obviously, in a town reaching so far in history anything beyond mid-17th century is 'new'.

the fragile layers of history

I was asked if we'd found similar stencil patterns as we did at our newly acquired house in Krumlov also at the Lake house. The answer is yes - here are a few pics (from last year) to show you.

This kind of research is always something very exciting as one peels the layers - or, indeed, as they fall off once you touch them! One imagines the generations that lived there before us, and contemplates one's own mortality. The house stood here for centuries, and will stand long after we had gone. And one day there will be someone that starts peeling the wall and finds our own thin layer that passed briefly through.
But what is the correct procedure once you find the layers? Should you strip the whole wall down to the stone or brick, and start new render from scratch? Well, some do, but we try to find a more respectful way. The conservationists here divide between two schools of thought:
1/ carefully uncover different layers in different places on the wall as best as possible, then photograph them and/or trace them. Knock off anything that is obviously about to fall off, then make good the bare bits, and cover the wall with new paint, lime based. Then make fresh stencils copying the patterns you found, and paint the whole, or parts of, the wall with them.
2/ Having uncovered different layers in different places, carefully restore them to as good as you can make it (scalpel work is required here) and then paint them with organic penetration agent to fix them. The rest of the wall can be repaired, keeping the hidden layers undisturbed wherever possible. Then paint the wall, leaving 'windows' to the past where you have prepared and fixed them.
Here is a picture of such a restoration we did in our Prague flat. But which way we go at Lake house and the riverside house in Krumlov is not yet clear. But the main thing, while making the space suitable for living, and while making sure it doesn't deteriorate further, is to try not to destroy its history more than is absolutely inevitable. Well, at least we shall try. Which way would you go?

conservation research

Not sure if anyone's really interested in the details of our search (see blog below), but I am finding it all very exciting and can't resist posting at least some observations, as the initial confusion begins to lead to at least a partial enlightenment.
Looking at the layers of decorative stencilling on the 1st floor, we get information about the age of the walls, and the approximate date of the major reconstruction(s?) that caused such an upheaval to the layout of the rooms and the ceilings. Here you can see an early 20C stencil (floral).
Under it is this gentler green design, then a couple of (pinkish) layers that won't separate but then you get two blue patterns, one on top of the other (the darker blue design is the older). The main partition wall's layers end here. It's a lovely, generous stencil in deep blue, with grey band around the floor level and a grey-blue strip below the ceiling. Our expert dates it to mid-19th C, which confirms the reconstruction having taken place at the time when ceilings had to be hidden or gotten rid of by decree. (Quite why the then builders had to chop the ceiling off at the partition is another question though - but on that later).
The outside wall's decorative layers continue deeper - the reds probably baroque, the black probably as old as the 16th C, which would date the 1st floor and above being built around that time (the ground floor is a vaulted Middle Ages space).

We racked our brains though: where is the main interior wall that would have originally supported the large ceiling? The beams that remained at their original length suggest a 25x25ft room, a heavy ceiling... but apart from the 'new' partition there is no supporting wall for the original length. We paced the place, we measured, we traipsed up and down the attic stair to compare but no matter how we tried, the direction of the imagined wall would have led right into one of the windows. Then an idea: perhaps the window wasn't there in the first place, and was added ad the same time as the reconstruction we are talking about? We looked at the plan and sure enough there are 5 windows in the facade at that level - 2 and 2 on the outsides with exact distances between them, and a middle one that isn't so exact. Just a theory this (so far) but it is possible that the classicist facade we see now is the result of someone's 'grand design' to modernise their house and bring in more light.....
I am sure we shall get the answers eventually. For now, I am on tenterhooks :-)

the joys and sorrows of reconstruction

One of the duties of a new owner of any listed building is that before any reconstruction can begin, and in order to even ask for a planning permission, one has to get a thorough 'historic research' done on the fabric of the building and on its archive history. Which is great, I totally approve of the conservationist approach because I love and respect old buildings with a passion - although others here revile the conservationists for interfering.
Well, so we started - otherwise we'll have nowhere to live if we tally too much. So in I went with my architect friend who officially oversees the project, the project engineer who specialises in historic buildings, and my dear friend who owns the Museum of building crafts in Cesky Krumlov, and has years of local experience as Krumlov's top conservation consultant. Why am I giving you all their professional qualifications? Because the expedition to the house turned into a huge argument - each expert saw different priorities for conservation, each wants different things exposed and preserved, or indeed covered up and conserved. And in the middle of it is me (my partner is in England now) with my own imagination of which way to take the house. Everyone means well, but there is no single way! (and this is not all - the report and the project design have to then be submitted to the regional conservation body who might have yet another view...)
Well, like I said, the house dates back to Middle Ages. Since then its many generations of owners did what they deemed practical for the time the house was in their care. Sometimes it is quite easy to peel the layers back, but sometimes the successive re-builds result in such a puzzle that it is almost impossible to see how the original house might have been conceived, and indeed, it is hard to decide which of the historic re-builds to take as the bits that will be exposed. Should one force the mediaeval look back onto the house, or should one stick to the 19th century rebuild? This, too, is history after all. The only thing that we all agreed on is to get rid of anything that appeared since the 1970s which is all a very shoddy B&Q type do-it-yourself job.
My first hope when we bought the house was to recover and expose the renaissance ceiling. But the rooms below suggested that its original size would have stretched over some partitions so the whole disposition of the first floor didn't tally with the imagined size of the ceiling. 'Easy', I thought. 'We'll knock the new partitions down, and re-build the missing walls under it, the ceiling is worth bringing back to life'. I nursed this idea because Krumlov has many such ceilings that were discovered hidden under boards and reed-scree. The reason for this was that during Maria Therezia's time (mid 19thC) a decree was given to get rid of all wooden ceilings because they were fire hazard. So people hid them, rather than have the trouble of removing them. So I thought this would be another such re-discovered beauty.

Well, having had the first small glimpse of the existence of the ceiling on Saturday, I now spent the whole day with a builder in clouds of dust carefully removing lines of floor bricks and filler-rubble from the attic trying to trace the outline of the main ceiling and also looking in other places for signs of the disposition of smaller ceilings - to discover the original lay-out of the rooms below. Or so we thought.... as what we discovered was a total patchwork of perhaps three or four different re-build epochs: part of the posh ceiling, but much of it removed and replaced by half-timbers and weird layers of planks. Nothing made sense. Which is the point at which my three wise counselors started to tear their respective hair out. And my idea of getting rid of the 'modern' partitions underneath was also put to rest, as they turn out to be at least 150 years old. Well, whatever gets decided, it won't be easy!
I don't know what will be the result of all this.
I wonder what you think of all this, Thud....

Lake house progress, and Septic tank drama

The Lake house is benefiting from the injection of means through the sale of the house in Krumlov (see blog below) - which is a great relief as we were really frustrated by the slow progress there. So now there's much fevered activity planning the next stages of the reconstruction, and builders have started getting the main living room and the future kitchen into shape - first having to demolish some recent partitions and then bringing the water, waste and heating pipes in. The 'sitting room' has beautiful wide floorboards, totally woodworm-ridden, but we aim to try and conserve them and then re-lay them (fingers crossed). The kitchen floor now has old concrete that will be ripped out and replaced by brick/old timber combination, laid into a bed of shingle and sand with 'breathing channels' around walls (no cellars here).

We had a small drama with the septic tank - having had it made to measure, it was sitting in its maker's yard as the ground at Lake house is frozen, so there was no point in taking it over there. Then a fevered phonecall from one of our buiders: 'quick, we must get the tank over NOW! The guy who made it died yesterday so we need to avoid having it locked in his yard until his estate is sorted out'! OK. So having got over the shock of the nice guy's sudden death, we phone the janitor of the area where the dead man's yard is, to let us come and collect the tank. 'Can't do that', is the answer. So what now??? I tell this story to another of my builders who puts on a 'knight on a white charge expression', picks up the phone and rings. 'We are coming tomorrow with a pick-up. It'll be around 8am so make sure you are having your breakfast then'. 'OK', says the janitor. What the eye doesn't see...' And so we went and stole our own property off another's property and now it sits at the Lake house. Such are ways you can do business simply, in this country :-) Thank goodness.
And good news - our builders managed to save the vaulted ceiling that looked like it'd have to be demolished. It is looking great now:


Meanwhile the small forest road that is our access there is a challenge nowadays, as it is a veritable skating rink, but once there, the place oozes its charm as always.

The lake is still covered in thick ice that is sheer pleasure to walk out to, and so each visit to see the progress and to plan the next steps is like a holiday outing :-)

Forest House news

As you've seen from the last photographs of the insulation installed, the latest is that the roof has been covered with a weatherproof cover as the building-site is now shut down for the Winter, apart from the new upstairs windows that will be fitted tomorrow.
The roof tiles will have to wait till the Spring.
I am now much happier about the end result, as it wasn't easy, especially where the new roofers had to make good over, or joining onto, the timbers that were done by the guys before them. But they did manage pretty well (see this picture):

There are still a few small problems to do with with the aesthetics of the finish (pic)
Other than that, I shall be looking forward to restarting the site again in April. In fact I'd like to get the barn roof done together with finishing the house roof at the same time, just to avoid any further potential problems! The plan is to get the future, bigger, barn roof fit snugly onto the new gable end, which is now at least 4 ft higher and much wider (as you can see from the photo on the top)
Meanwhile I should be coming back here to ski and to enjoy the Winter snow and sun, I hope.

lake house works

At last the Lake house works have progressed to the point that the first stage of clearing up of junk and rot is over, and we are actually renovating. The poor house looks like a bomb's hit it and I wish we could at least give the facade a face-lift but of course that will have to be the last job! We've also decided that we'll leave the roof to later: we are working from the inside out. It will be slow progress (finances permitting) but it is VERY exciting.
The first renovation job we did was to install some strengthening rods that will hold the house together: the house was first built, of stone, at the time when the lake was created (see*below) and later added to. One of the later additions (probably around the end of 18th century judging by the roof timbers) were brick vaultings to the north half of the ground floor. These were not tied in very well, and as the house has no cellar, the pressure of the vaulting has been pulling the walls apart. The vaults are in extremely poor condition, with gaping holes, and currently supported by several props. So the strenghtening rods are installed to prevent any further movement. We'll now have to see whether it will be possible to save the vaulted ceilings - hope so. There were vaults in the cowsheds, too, but they were mostly fallen down and not really worth saving, but the ones in the house would be good to keep, fingers crossed.The next job is to create floors for where the downstairs bathroom, pantry and hall will be. (that's where we found the treasure - see earlier posts) These were spaces with just earth floors, but on the whole dry so the challenge is to create floors that suit today's bathrooms but let the house breathe and don't insult the overall feel with some horrible new tiles.

So the guys who are working there are creating floors that have breathing channels around the walls and consist of a sandwich earth-shingle, with unglazed brick-type tiles laid into a thin layer of specially mixed concrete that's got lots of lime and sand, on the top. All the piping for water etc is laid in the shingle layer. Hope it works!

We won't be able to go much further for a while, but what excitement to be going even the first positive step forward.

*the lake is a 138hectare man-made pond, created in the early 15th century by the local aristocrat for fish-farming, on the site of a boggy valley, by building a large retaining wall which is still there today. From 16th century it belonged to the Zlata Koruna monastery, a well-to-do cistercian monastery near Cesky Krumlov, later it was part of the Krumlov's aristocracy, the Rozmberk's, estate, later still by the Schwarzenberg estate. Now it's owned by the Czech Army, lying right on the border of its vast training area, Boletice. It is the highest-lying pond in Bohemia, at the altitude of 731m.

replacing roof timbers on Forest House

In response to Thud's concerns about the old timbers - sadly, we've discovered a fungal infection that was in the very main large timbers which were so far hidden within the outside walls. To change these timbers, practically all of the roof will have to be dismantled anyway, which takes us to deeper waters officially (see below), and also the cost of re-fitting, i.e. mixing the old with the new, would have been prohibitive, unfortunately. In fact my project engineer has always been concerned about the original timbers because their sizes were not really up to carrying the weight of the new tiles, insulation and a lot of snow, but up till the latest discovery we were going to put up with it because I loved them. Now it's all got to be up to specs anyway, because we needed to have a new planning permission (you don't need one for replacing covering, but once you dismantle the timber structure it gets more complicated bureaucracy-wise). But the old timbers that are sound will not be thrown away - they'll be put to good use within the house and used to repair the barn roof later.
Now we had to wait for the planning permission. It was granted, so the new start is the last week in July.
Meanwhile I am keeping my spirits up by enjoying the hot Summer days doing up the garden, picking wild strawberries in the woods, and watching nature rather than the poor wounded house with gaping holes. And soon I'll be off to the UK again.
Sorry I have not replied earlier - I was back in Britain, earning money for the reconstruction :-)

Forest House reconstruction3

In response to Thud's question re my post of 25th April, as to whether these kind of stone/rubble walls were always rendered (and most Czech buildings are indeed rendered), I asked a friendly local builder who specialises in historic buildings to enlighten us as to why. In brief, this is what he said:
Apart from the obvious climatic reasons (hard winters, hot Summers) the rendering serves as both an aesthetic and a strenghtening layer. The oldest ordinary houses (as opposed to forts and castles etc) were made of locally collected stones from fields etc, which were packed, together with mud/clay into rows of wooden shuttering - similar to the ones used now for concrete. The shuttering would be removed after the layer has hardened, and moved up so another layer could be formed, and so on. Given the width of these walls (over a meter thick) the packing method produced durable walls that lasted for centuries. People with more means, or with easy access to quarried or found stone that chipped into more or less regular blocks would use these in ways similar to the English dry-stone walling, in that the blocks would form the outer skins of the wall, which would be then filled with loose stones - except here, too, clay would be used. Very thin layers between the blocks, and as filler for the rubble in between. Both these sorts of walls would then be painted with thin clay render, leaving the stone structure quite visible, only in later centuries thicker render took over as covering, using lime as well.
It was fascinating to listen to this knowledgeable man who was clearly aching to tell me all he knew. We decided that we'll find time to go and photograph the houses in the area with the view of writing about different techniques for the blog. Or start another blog altogether.
Meanwhile, shuttering came off at the Forest house from the new concrete 'collar' with armature which will hold the old walls from pulling apart, and help to hold the roof structure. Hmm: concrete... doesn't sit so well with the old techniques in principle. Feels like a nasty tooth filling. But it seems necessary, as the house was so full of cracks and the walls were bulging so badly. We'll see. Maybe better to fill the tooth than to have it pulled?

The Czech cuisine?

Well, this family cooks like it's cooked for generations. Their kitchen at the Mill near Cesky Krumlov has no electric stoves or kettles, or any other modern gadgets; no gas either, just an old-fashioned, traditional, wood-fired, ceramic-tiled stove that dominates the room and serves to heat the house, bake bread and cook meals, and a drying rack over it for clothes and herbs of all sorts. In fact these kind of stoves even have, at the back of them, at a shoulder height, a platform with fleeces where you can stretch out and rest or sleep if you fancy being really warm and cosy. In the old days, even this sleeping shelf had its function - old people would be put there to ease their last, arthritic, years, or newborn babies, who needed to be away from drafts. Aga eat your heart out!
I took one of my English visitor friends there for tea and he immediately started to photograph the place (this photo is one of his), in fact everyone who goes there is swept away by the genuine warmth of the family who live here and their way of life that refuses Ikea because 'this kitchen works much better, doesn't it?' Indeed it does. And the food cooked there, using their own herbs and the milk form their own goats, tastes so much nicer than anything cooked on electricity or gas. Once a week the family have a bread-baking day, which is just fabulous. The dough rises in straw baskets, then the risen loaves are put on a wooden shovel with a hugely long handle - about 2 meters long because it needs to reach far into the oven. About twelve loaves fit in, together with sweet dough and poppyseed pastries to fill the smaller spaces in between. And when it is all baked, it tastes so good one just stuffs oneself, it's impossible to stop eating this heavenly, crunchy gift with its soft, fragrant and yieldy inside.
So it makes sense that all around us here in the countryside, people who live or are newly acquiring older country buildings, have started to come back to the idea of such stoves now: for their better tasting food, and also for the economy and ecology of use. And the stove-makers' business is booming. But maybe the Czechs just won't let go off their fairy-tales they are so famous for: just think how many feature such stoves. The lazy John who refuses to get off his warm place behind the stove (and then becomes King for his trouble:-) ) the old women who brew their magic potions on them, even the German/Czech story of Hansel and Grethel features a stove with a large enough oven to fit the Witch in...

Small but perfectly formed

According to the statistics, the Czech Republic’s population contains a high percentage of atheists. But, as is often the way with statistics, this isn’t the whole story and certainly hasn’t always been the case. The country has an impressive religious heritage. Not only was it one of the birthplaces of Protestantism, but there are hundreds of old Catholic churches dotted about the place, a lot of them delightful buildings that are well worth looking out for and looking at. I particularly like the small ones, some Gothic, some baroque, some a mixture of the two, that you find in town centres and on village greens in many places in southern Bohemia. The picture shows the one on the green at Holasovice, its colourwashed walls and baroque gable beautifully matching the houses of the village. As in England, they’re sometimes locked, but it’s always worth stopping and having a look. If you get a chance to see inside, there might be ornate plasterwork, statues of saints, or gilded cherubs fluttering around. And an atmosphere of peace in a busy world.

Spectacular vernacular

A while back I was enthusing about the buildings of Cesky Krumlov – especially their painted facades and plasterwork like elaborate cake-icing. Well, there are delicious buildings in the Bohemian countryside too, and the sight of a group of vernacular-baroque farmhouse fronts arranged along the edge of a village green is one of the pleasures of this region. Probably the best place to see this is the village of Holasovice, where the long green with its pond and tiny church is completely lined with lovely plaster-covered houses. Most of them have the typical local courtyard-farm layout of a pair of wings on either side of a central gate. Some have simple pointed gables, some go the whole baroque hog, with curvaceous gables and all kinds of charming decorations. Quite a few bear dates from the 19th century, although I don’t know whether these dates relate to the building of the houses or are when the plasterwork took its present form. Whichever, the place is a delight, and an easy drive north from Cesky Krumlov.

They build things differently here

One of the interesting things about doing up old Czech buildings is how different their construction is. When Pushkin talks of a building made of bricks he is not talking about one like the thin ones we get in England, no the walls are likely to be several bricks thick to keep out the Czech winter. I took this photo of a broken down old farm building near our place. It shows that around our way the walls are made of the local granite (which is only a few feet down where we live), but that the roof vaults are made of a dome of bricks.

history in the facades

Just adding to Phil's blog below - a local friend of mine who is a professional restorer has made a thorough search of all the facades in the historic area of Cesky Krumlov, and hearing him talk about it is absolutely fascinating. I particularly loved him explain about the decisions that have to be made each time a house is to be 'redecorated' - you see, there are layers and layers of 'faces' that each house accumulated over the centuries, following the fashions of the day. So Jiri Bloch (the friend in question) might carefully unpeel from several small sample squares all the layers - each time working out what the whole facade would have looked like. Right under them all he might find an absolutely magnificent mediaeval fresco. Well, sometimes the decision goes to knock all the upper layers off and reveal the fresco, sometimes it is felt that it's best to keep the fresco hidden (i.e. protected) and only restore, say, the classicist face of the house. The next most important thing seems to be to preserve the authenticity of the chosen layer and not to add anything - that's why so often you can see on the facades here just half-pictures, or patches of underlayer revealed from some newer layers. Of course Jiri doesn't make these decisions himself - his research is done for the Preservation body of the council and also for UNESCO I believe. But what's great is that over the last 15 years or so he collected together all the documentation, some of which is now on display in his own small but immensely rich-in-information Museum of building crafts. Well worth a visit - this is not advertising by the way, but a heartfelt recommendation.

Art on the streets

Many of Cesky Krumlov’s house facades are so highly decorated that they form a wonderful free outdoor art gallery. Wandering the streets and looking at the pictures and designs on the houses is one of the greatest pleasures of the place. And, unlike in a big city like Prague, you can take in all the highlights without walking for miles. In the Renaissance period a lot of the houses were covered with a striking black-and-white decoration called sgraffito – a technique in which you scratch away one colour to reveal a different contrasting colour underneath. There are still quite a lot of sgraffito-decorated house fronts left in the town. Some are covered in designs imitating big stone blocks (like Italian buildings of the time), others have delightful cartoon-like pictures that take you back in time four hundred years. There are colourful painted building-fronts too – portraits, religious subjects, and other scenes adorn a number of the houses. Look up as you walk around, and you'll see how the streets glow with life.

Architecture heaven

The sight of what looks like a round church in the post called "In response" reminds me to say that the countryside in southern Bohemia is architecture heaven. I think most Brits who like old buildings would be seriously impressed with what you find in the region. What you see down here is different from the kind of grandeur you get in Prague. Small and not-so-small churches (soaring medieval or ornate baroque), tiny wayside shrines, castles on crags, and some of the houses...wow! In fact the photograph with the church has one in the background – a courtyard farm with a curvy baroque front all done out in plasterwork. There are whole villages of these, and I'll post some pictures when I get my digital photographs sorted out.

Undiscovered jewel?

‘The Crown jewel of Bohemia’ – that’s how people in the know describe Cesky Krumlov, a tiny mediaeval town close to the Austrian border. We love being here, and this non-commercial blog is just to record our thoughts and feelings about the town, and the area, and to give you an idea about life here should you ever come to visit.

THE PLACE

The town sits in the foothills of Sumava, a region of National Parks and protected Areas of Natural Beauty. It nestles in the crook of the river Vltava, and its narrow, cobbled, higgledy-piggledy streets are overlooked by a huge castle that towers on the rocks above. My English friends fondly describe the castle’s older parts as ‘Gormenghast’, while the Czechs are more prone to sing praises to its richly painted Renaissance buildings and the mystical tower bearing Alchemical symbols that tie it to the times when South Bohemia was a place of John Dee’s retreat.

In fact, the adjectives ‘magical’, or ‘fairytale’ are the ones most frequently heard from the lips of visitors who gaze at Krumlov for the first time, while its Czech residents nod their heads sagely, and say quite seriously that indeed there is deep magic under these rocks – healing springs issuing from silver and graphite veins below, and ley-line crossroads that later materialised in the many Celtic roads and settlements, marked to this day by standing rocks and little chapels dotted around the town, or hidden in the forests nearby.

But the romantic description doesn’t end here: every house has a story to tell, their painted facades often hide clues to their former occupants, and walking around the town is like a journey through a historic puzzle that is still waiting to be deciphered.

And for those who like to immerse themselves in this old-world atmosphere, the town offers wonderful restaurants serving mediaeval style meals, crafts markets, gypsy bands, even festivals where the residents dress up to parade around the town, and perform Summer solstice or Christmas traditional plays, or passion plays for Easter.